CHORUS unaccompanied

TWO PARTSONGS for male choir

The two partsongs, Stillness and Gods, were written at the request respectively of Pendyrus Male Choir and Ynysybwl Male Choir, with both of which groups I was involved in the 1970s; and, although published together, were not intended to form a unit. Both are scored for three-part choir, rather than the standard four parts, but take the opportunity to divide each section to produce six parts when required.

StillnessJames Elroy Flecker

When the words rustle no more,

and the last work’s done,

when the bolt lies deep in the door,

and Fire, our Sun,

falls on the dark-laned shadows of the floor,

when from the clock’s last chime to the next chime

Silence beats his drum,

and Space with gaunt grey eyes and her brother, Time,

wheeling and whispering come,

she with the mould of form and he with the loom of rhyme:

then twittering out in the night my thought-birds flee,

I am emptied of all my dreams;

I only hear Earth turning, only hear

Lethe’s long bankless streams,

and only know that I would drown

if you laid not your hand on me.

GodsWalt Whitman

Lover divine and perfect comrade,

waiting content, invisible yet, but certain,

be Thou my God.

Thou, the Ideal Man, able, fair, content and loving,

complete in body and dilate in spirit,

be Thou my God.

O Death (for Life has serv’d its turn),

opener and usher to the Heavenly mansion,

be Thou my God.

Aught of mightiest, best I see, conceive or know

(to break the stagnant tie, thee to free, O soul!),

be thou my God.

All great ideas, the races’ aspirations,

all heroisms, deeds of rapt enthusiasts,

be ye my Gods.

Or Time: or Space: or shape of Earth divine and wond’rous:

or some fair shape I, viewing, worship:

or lustr’ous orb of sun or moon by night:

be ye my Gods.

TWO MEDITATIONS

These Two Meditations, like the Partsongs for male choir, were not originally conceived as a unit, and in fact were written some twelve years apart.Dychweled, the later work, is a complex and elaborate work for a skilled six-part choir, while Sleep is a comparatively straightforward score. Both are unaccompanied.

DychweledT H Parry-Williams

Ni all terfysgoedd daear vyth gyffroi The earthly tumult never can disturb

distawrwydd nef: ni sigla lleisiau’r llawrthe high silent Heavens: the voices of the world

These folksong arrangements were all written with one combination of voices in mind: the traditional Welsh male choir of the South Wales valleys. They were designed for informal gatherings of singers, after concerts or in pubs, but were also a conscious attempt to wean such informal singsongs away from the churchy Methodist harmonies that so often tended to creep in to the improvised harmonisations. Some of the arrangements, notably that of Waly Waly, have become among the most performed of all my compositions, both in commercial recordings and in radio and television performances, mainly by Pendyrus Male Choir; but the informal performances continue to heavily outnumber the formal ones.

Waly waly

The water is wide, I cannot get o’er,

and neither have I wings to fly,

give me a boat that will carry two,

and both shall cross, my love and I.

I leant my back up against an oak,

thinking it was a mighty tree,

but first it bent and then it broke;

so did my love prove false to me.

O love is handsome and love is kind,

gay as a jewel when it is new;

but love grows old and waxes cold,

and fades away like morning dew.

The water is wide, I cannot get o’er,

and neither have I wings to fly,

give me a boat that will carry two,

and both shall cross, my love and I.

to listen to the first performance given by Ynysybwl Male Choir conducted by the composer:

The Nativity Mass was not the first of my choral works, but it was the first to be performed and as such was designated as my Op 1.The original version included an overture for recorder and piano, and these accompanying instruments appeared at intervals throughout the score. However when reviewing the work in the 1990s I decided that these instrumental sections were by far the weakest sections of the music and needed to be deleted (the optional trumpet in the final section alone remains). I also took the opportunity of recasting several of the sections in terms of rhythm and harmony, although the many original naїve harmonisations and word settings have, I trust, remained unimpaired. At the same time the transcription of Peter Cornelius’s Die Drei Könige, the only portion of the text not in Latin, was removed. The construction of the Latin text was undertaken by Barry Blackburn and Ian Crane.

The work is scored for unaccompanied voices and the solo parts are to be drawn from members of the chorus.